


a glimpse of heaven

by jenhyung



Category: NCT (Band), WeishenV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 00:39:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18399590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenhyung/pseuds/jenhyung
Summary: Sicheng has trouble breathing. - Sicheng/Yongqin





	a glimpse of heaven

**Author's Note:**

> i used 'yongqin' over 'ten' because i suck, i know.
> 
> (not beta-ed, as per usual)

Sicheng wakes with utmost effort. Everything about his body is exceptionally heavy today, and something in the back of his mind is nagging just why. Shrugging on a pair of sweats and yanking a jumper over his head feels like a task meant for three people to accomplish. Without dawdling, he slouches his way out into the living room, just in time to catch Kun shuffle out of the kitchen with a mug of tea.

“Good morning.”

“Morning,” Sicheng mumbles, voice still full of sleep. He heads first towards the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash up, stumbling back out for the couch with damp hands. He leans against Kun, peering over the older boy’s arm to read whatever Kun’s reading on his Weibo timeline. When he finds that it’s mostly news, he turns away, closing his eyes once more.

“Are you not heading out for practice?” Kun asks, sipping quietly. It smells like black tea, earthy and sweet. “It’s almost nine.”

“Almost nine is too early.” Sicheng keeps his eyes closed, listening to the way his hair rustles whenever Kun shifts. “Almost nine is too early for anything.”

Kun hums, non-committal. He lets Sicheng rests for another couple of minutes, but it seems only a second later when he forewarns, “You’re going to be late.”

“I want to be late.”

“You want to be late?”

He thinks it over carefully. “I don’t want to be late.”

“Then you should be leaving right about now.”

“I don’t even want to go.”

That surprises Kun. He locks his phone and puts it away, focus now completely on Sicheng. His stare bores burning holes into Sicheng’s face, sharp enough for Sicheng to feel even with his eyes shut. He gives Sicheng time to explain his remark, prompting once more in a kind voice when Sicheng refuses to.

“I just –” Images of hands and lips flash across the darkness behind his eyelids. His heart rate speeds to the hundreds, his chest tightens like there’s a weight pushing into the couch, sinking into leather. It forces him to open his eyes, breath evening when he meets Kun’s gaze, warm and calming. “I just really don’t want to.”

Kun doesn’t answer too quickly, even though Sicheng knows he’s clearly aware of the situation. It’s hard to hide, now that he’s moved from the room he used to share with Yuta and Taeil, where it was easy to keep everything bottled in. Not that they were any less attentive, of course not – Taeil was always up in his space and Yuta never let a day go by without lying in Sicheng’s bed, nose in his phone. It was just easier, being away. It’s only been a week or two since the move, and _already_ Kun knows.

“Kun knows everything.” Xuxi told him once, over hotpot and under baseball caps. He’d chewed thoughtfully, “It’s a little scary if you think about it.”

“You’re going to have to go,” Kun tells him. Sicheng wonders how Kun manages to tell him what he needs to hear, yet still sound sympathetic without telling him what he wants to hear. “Isn’t the dress rehearsal today?”

“Yeah.” Sicheng fiddles with the tassels on a throw pillow, “But I already know what I’m wearing. Technically, I don’t have to go.”

“And what would happen if we all lived by technicalities,” Kun marvels. He takes a long sip from his tea, probably lukewarm by now. “The shoot is tomorrow. Just hold it in for one more day.”

 _What if I don’t want to hold it in?_ Sicheng doesn’t say that. He’s too afraid, as if speaking of it will bring the worst of consequences, as if it’d make everything real. Kun wouldn’t flinch or show a sliver of disappointment, he knows that, but Sicheng doesn’t know a lot of things either. A Pandora’s box he isn’t willing to touch even with a six-foot bamboo pole.

“Okay,” he mumbles.

Kun graciously lets him lie still for at least two minutes before running a slender hand through Sicheng’s unkept hair, signaling that it’s now really the time for him to leave. Sicheng concedes, opening his eyes once more. He stares at the ceiling for five whole seconds, then gets up to grab his backpack.

Another long day it shall be.

 

+

 

“– or do you want this one?”

Sicheng finds the question redundant. He looks between both turtlenecks, one a shade darker than the other, then back up at the stylist. She’s going to pick the one she deems fit anyway, he doesn’t see why she has to humor him into thinking he’s got a say in anything. He catches himself; emotion overload aside, he should really give her the benefit of the doubt.

“This one,” he answers, pointing at the turtleneck of a lighter gray. She nods happily, walking away to hang the rejected turtleneck back on to the rack of monochrome tops and pants.

Quietly, he returns to the game on his phone. The practice room bustles with stylists and managers and camera directors, discussing the storyboard that they’ve all gone over countless of times. Underpaid interns dash around with hot coffee and company phones hung around their necks, ready to capture any moments worth for a behind-the-scenes video. Though, Sicheng hardly thinks anything from this video (apart from the choreography) would be worth recording.

To validate his point, he glances around the room. He’s hit with relief first, when he finds that the room is void of the lithe figure and saccharine voice that has been haunting his dreams, then a tinge of sadness. His knee bounces agitatedly, the only thing that allows the tension coiled in his stomach to slowly ebb away.

“Finally!”

Sicheng bolts upright, head knocking painfully against the floor-to-ceiling mirror where he’d been so comfortably leaning against. Something cold grabs him by the back of his neck, turning white-hot when it reaches the back of his ears, and across in a slither over his shoulders. His phone clatters to the vinyl floor, sound magnified in his mind.

“Sorry, sorry,” the voice goes. Sicheng feels it prick his skin, not unlike the thorns on a rose. “Taeyong hyung insisted we have dessert.”

“After breakfast?” He hears their manager chide.

“As if I could say anything to stop him from having sweets!”

“Alright, alright.” Everyone knows it’s never wise to stand between Taeyong and snacks. “The stylists want your opinion on your wardrobe, then we’re going to have a couple of dry runs with the camera directors, just to make sure we’re on par with the team from editing.”

“Got it.”

Sicheng holds his breath – he doesn’t know why, it’s not going to do him any good anyway – head ducking low. A pair of red sneakers come into view, just at the top of what he can see. He remains still, he remains silent. The game on his phone flashes _LOSER,_ followed by a notice that says he’s dropped two ranks. Sicheng turns his phone over, the word _loser_ turning over in his mind again and again.

“Hey.”

At this point, Sicheng decides, if he really _did_ continue to keep silent, things would just be completely irreparable. He clears his throat, nodding curtly, “Hey.”

“Had your breakfast yet?”

The Mandarin is smooth, smoother than it’s ever been. He doesn’t know when it became the default language they used together. Lines of the past few months blurred just like how days and nights of practice blended into eternal hours of gray, but it makes Sicheng’s lungs hurt. Hearing it makes his lungs hurt, as if he can’t breathe. It feels like he hasn’t breathed right in the last month or so. What did fresh air feel like, he wouldn’t know.

“I have,” Sicheng lies. If he did, maybe the conversation would end here.

It doesn’t. “You don’t look like you have.”

Thankfully, Sicheng is saved when he’s pulled away by a stylist, white outfits on hangars hooked along her forearm. _Black and white,_ Sicheng hears the director’s voice in his head. _To complement one another beautifully. Yin and yang._

 _Yin and yang_. Sicheng had to keep himself from rolling his eyes.

It’s been a long month or so planning for this video, and Sicheng thinks he’s just about over it. He has the dance memorized so thoroughly that he could plainly do it in his sleep. He has dreamt of the practice room, and the lyrics flowed so easily, as if he could understand them all. He has dreamt of how the practice would go, music and touch and hands and lips. Sometimes it would end well, sometimes it wouldn’t.

Sicheng wakes with a heavy heart when it doesn’t.

He waits – he’s always waiting and Kun was _wrong_ , because he wasn’t _late_ – until they call for him to change into his first outfit. He hopes, as he puts his phone back into his backpack, that this is the outfit he wears tomorrow, because he really doesn’t see a difference in trying five difference combinations when they all look the same. Swiftly, he changes into the thin turtleneck and wide-leg pants, remerging from behind the curtain with a little more conviction.

_Just hold it in for one more day._

He stretches, hands to the floor, back and hips cricking, then to the right, and left, the burn addictive. When he’s sure that he isn’t about to pull a muscle, he dusts his hands off, and waits for instructions. The directors gather around, showing him where the giant frame is to stand and where the camera points are going to be. _Don’t look into the camera_ , he’s told. _It should feel like it’s just the both of you in a world of your own._

Sicheng breathes through his mouth.

“I’m ready,” he hears. Again, sweet.

“Good,” the director, the main one in an orange snapback, backpedals from where he’d been standing by Sicheng. He left a bottle of water in his stead, marking the center of the room. “Now, the frame will be pretty thick, so make sure you’re standing close enough for the mirror effect to come through.”

“Alright.”

Sicheng steps up to the left of the bottle, suddenly finding it the most interesting thing in the room. The same pair of sneakers invade his vision, but he turns around before his eyes disobeys his mind to travel upwards. His back fumes from a pair of eyes sharper than Kun’s, a gaze so much harsher.

“Lights, please!”

The front and back of the room dim. Sicheng quells his thundering heart. Is it better that they’re in the spotlight? Now that the rest of the world feels like it’s fading away? Or is it just an unwanted stroke of god’s luck that they’re under a spotlight, magnified for the world to see?

“– and rolling!”

The first notes of piano keys echo the room, alluring, but enough to snap Sicheng back to reality. It reverberates, bouncing off the walls and mirrors, melody enveloping them. The first notes of the violin banish the voices in Sicheng’s head. He turns around, slow and to the beat, just like they practiced.

But he keeps his eyes away from the pair that is so intent on catching his attention. Instead, he glues his own train of sight to anywhere but – just under his undereye or the tall nose bridge he’s seen so painfully often in his dreams. Sicheng dances, and it’s easy because he’s been doing it for years.

It should be _so_ easy for him, but it’s not. Every touch of their hands, brush of their shoulders, for gods’ sake, his _teeth_ on _his_ bare _neck_. It’s so intimate. Everything is inescapable. No amount of meditation, pep talks, or motivational speeches could ever ready him for every time they run through this godforsaken song. Nothing helps the way his legs turn to jelly – they shouldn’t be turning into jelly, he’s a _dancer_ , a performer – or the way his ribs feel like they might fall off. His mind screams at him to keep his angles right, keep his angles sharp, don’t stumble, don’t mess things up.

Sicheng’s heart, by the end of the song, is tattered.

He makes it to the end at least, tight-lipped and eyes misty. _Don’t breathe, don’t breathe_ , he chants, vision blurring, because that _smell_. What the _hell_ is that smell? It’s like – some kind of cologne or perfume or an evil concoction made just to mess with Sicheng’s mind, just to make it muddled and useless. _Don’t breathe._ Then, he tells his heart, _don’t beat too loud._

Surely, he must be heard.

The lights flicker on again, engulfing the practice room in white light. The world returns, and Sicheng steps away to reach for a bottle of water in an outstretched hand. He breathes again.

“Good, good,” the director seems more than pleased.

Sicheng’s heart is thankful. It rests quietly in the corner of his chest, tending to its own bruises while Sicheng downs half the bottle of water as if it would help alleviate the ache.

“Now let’s run through it a couple of times before we break for lunch.”

Sicheng’s heart gives up for now. It’ll mend those bruises later.

 

+

 

Lunch is forever away. Sicheng doesn’t believe in time until they finally announce that it’s time for a break (maybe two hours into practicing). They had breaks in the middle, sure; fifteen-minute ones that last for two seconds. It makes Sicheng a little more grateful for the time Kun gave him in the morning. He watches – he’s always watching lately – everyone pile out of the room, calling for different restaurant places nearby the company. There’s no hunger in him, so Sicheng decides to hang back instead, returning to his spot by the mirror.

“Are you not going for lunch?”

Red sneakers.

Sicheng shakes his head. He pretends to dig through his backpack like he hasn’t already got his phone in his hand. “I’m not hungry.”

“You should still eat something.”

“I want to practice a little more.”

“By yourself?”

Sicheng pauses. It _is_ a two-person dance. “Yes,” he says anyway. No turning back now.

“Okay then.”

And it’s stupid, Sicheng knows, when he hears the door shut, leaving him alone in a room that suddenly feels far too big. Stupid to think that he would’ve been asked again, stupid to have assumed that something more could have come from that disjointed conversation. Did he even want more? He shouldn’t.

Tired of thinking, he surfs through Weibo and Twitter before starting another battle game with Chenle, who really shouldn’t be wasting time with phone games with their comeback so near. Sicheng lets this pass once, needing the distraction anyway. He wins, humbly, and Chenle exits the game room in what Sicheng assumes to be an act of retaliation. It makes his lips twitch; he’s sure he’s going to hear about it the next time they meet.

“This is the first I’ve seen you smile in a long time, you know?”

On reflex, Sicheng looks up, regretting it even before he locks eyes with the figure entering the room.

“Here.” Sicheng eyes the box of sandwich offered to him. “Well, it’s not poisoned, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” he says. It’s a ham and cheese sandwich. Sicheng recognizes it easily from the number of times he’s bought it himself. There seems to be no other option but to accept it, so Sicheng does. While he might be suffering from emotional turmoil, manners aren’t yet lost on him, “Thanks, Qin-ge.”

“ _Qin-ge._ ” It’s said like a… Sicheng doesn’t know what it’s said like. A sigh, and he figures he’s not sitting alone anymore. “Since when did you start calling me Qin-ge?”

Sicheng doesn’t know. Everything’s gray.

“Not that I mind it,” he’s told. “I like it, and it’s probably good to get used to it. Promotions in China, and all that.”

 _I don’t think that’s why I call you Qin-ge_. Sicheng crinkles the paper box in his hand, “Sure.”

Yongqin – Sicheng feels the name roll around his mind – uncaps the bottle of milk coffee, taking just a sip. He twists the cap back on, but keeps it in his hands anyway. The silence isn’t awkward, but it isn’t comfortable either. Certainly not as comfortable as it used to be.

“Practicing, you said?”

“I was,” Sicheng lies. He’s been lying a lot today. The sandwiches remained boxed in his hand. “I was, before.”

“Okay,” Yongqin gives him a nod. He gets to his feet promptly, leaving his coffee where Sicheng’d left his phone. “Let’s practice.”

 _Bad idea_. “Right now?”

“Yeah.”

_Really bad, horrible, terrible, worst idea ever I’ve ever heard._

Though, what could Sicheng possibly say when Yongqin’s already halfway across the practice room, ready to plug his phone into the sound system. He waits patiently for Sicheng to set the sandwich aside, standing now too. Sicheng walks to the center of the room, recalling all of the times he’d been reprimanded by his mother about the consequences of lying. He finds it (not at all) funny that it’s taken him over twenty years to truly understand it.

Yongqin gets into position by the time the first string of violin notes plays. He starts with his face to Sicheng’s.

 _Just breathe_ , Sicheng tells himself. He’s going to have to for now, he can stop breathing later.

And they dance. Sicheng goes through the motions, working hard to convey emotion into each step, focused on the art. He does as they’ve practiced, shrinking into himself when the music calls for it, pushing energy to the very tips of his fingers. No one watches them, but Sicheng practices hard anyway. Practice is practice.

Then comes the violin again, with a melody that wakes Sicheng drenched in cold sweat. It signals the last sequence, thankfully, and Sicheng finds himself facing Yongqin’s back now. His shoulders, narrow and tiny, feel like a wall Sicheng can’t conquer. He clenches his jaw and steps forward just as he’s supposed to, training his eyes to look at the window just past Yongqin’s left ear. From his peripheral, he knows how Yongqin is staring at him, but he can’t bear to look.

How can he _look_.

“Stop,” he hears. Hands land on his chest, searing hot through the thin material. Sicheng steps back immediately, breaking the trance. The intimacy dissipates. His eyes fall back to the ground. The music tapers off into silence, and he expects to hear the haunting piano keys start all over again, but finds that it isn’t on repeat like it usually is.

He listens to his own breathing. He wants to ask why they’ve stopped so close to the end of the routine, but that same nagging voice from this morning tells Sicheng he already knows why.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

His first response is to turn away, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A hand grabs his wrist, spinning him around. He could’ve so easily overpowered Yongqin, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to do anything more that could ruin what he already has. Red sneakers stare up at him. Yongqin’s hand is tight around his wrist, but Sicheng’s numb all over, he doesn’t feel it even if it hurts.

“Look at me.” Never did Yongqin have authority in his voice. Sicheng hears it for the first time today, but it’s still not enough. Manners aside, he just _can’t._ The reaction is maddening. His arm is yanked on once more, “Why won’t you look at me?”

Sicheng jerks his hand free, feeling the loss like punch to the face. 

“Did I do something wrong?” It truly is a painful thing, hearing such a voice taint with agony. “You can tell me, Sicheng, I won’t be mad.”

 _You won’t be mad_ , he scoffs. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Just – talk to me,” Yongqin pleads. His expression turns earnest.

Sicheng walks away, not a clue yet where he’s supposed to go. Yongqin is speaking again, refusing to let Sicheng brush this under the rug. Anger starts to color his words,

“Are you just going to be like this forever? You’re such a _kid_!” Sicheng says nothing, but he stops in his tracks. _A kid._ His reticence makes Yongqin go on, “Can’t we deal with this like adults? If you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you! How are we supposed to shoot the video together tomorrow if you won’t even _look_ at me?”

The words leave his lips before he can stop them, “Then maybe you should pick someone else to dance with next time.”

“What?” _Oh_ , he regrets it immediately. “What did you just say?”

Like a broken tap, “I said to pick someone else next time.”

“Sicheng –”

“If I’m such a _kid_ , then why’d you pick me in the first place?” He whirls around, glaring at Yongqin now. He’s been hiding everything from everyone based off the sole reason that he should know better as an adult now. He can’t be off gallivanting, doing whatever he wants anymore. There’s so much on the line, he knows.  “You should’ve asked Taeyong hyung, or Jaehyun. Or even Jeno, or Jisung. You didn’t have to ask _me_. If I’m such a kid, you shouldn’t have picked _me_.”

Sicheng’s heart cowers in a corner. Yongqin stares at him with glassy eyes, unsteady with shock.

“Why _did_ you pick me?” Sicheng barrels on. His filter’s gone out the window. “I know you _know_ , Qin-ge.”

Yongqin stills.

Sicheng’s heart dissolves into nothing.

“ – and Qin-ge too,” Xuxi had warned him that night. He had dipped a slice of beef once, twice, into the steel pot, shoving it into his mouth. “They know everything, those two.”

 _He_ does _know._

He _knows,_ and yet.

Sicheng feels the pressure build up behind his eyes, but nothing can beat the feeling of frustration filling his chest. It drowns his heart.

“What do I know?” Yongqin whispers. The audacity. He steps back into Sicheng’s space, narrow eyes turning into saucers, “What am I supposed to know, Sicheng?”

He turns away –

“Look at me.”

“Just leave me alone, I –”

“No, I said _look_ at me –”

“ _Why_ do you want me to look at you!” He doesn’t really yell it, as much as he thinks he is, because the distance between them is non-existent and he knows it isn’t beneath Yongqin to knee him in the torso. “Why do you keep – insisting that I look at you, I – don’t _have_ to look at you – the dance doesn’t require me to –”

“I _want_ you to look at me!”

Now, Sicheng’s sure he’s being yelled at. He falls silent.

In a single breath, “I _want_ you to look at me. So, will you? Just look at me? Please?”

 _Please_.

Sicheng’s resolve crumples. He lifts his head, but angles it away, like it would help with the way Yongqin is still staring at him. His plan to take a step back must’ve been written plainly on his face because Yongqin’s hands are on his arms, holding him in place. Without any choice, Sicheng sighs and gives in, closing and opening his eyes to, for the first time in weeks, meet Youngqin’s gaze with his own.

“What am I supposed to know?”

Sicheng’s eyes dart to plush lips, mind of a twelve-year-old. “Nothing.”

Like a bullet cutting through thin air, “Do you want to kiss me?”

 _What?_ What. _What._

“What?” Sicheng stumbles back, but Yongqin follows. “Do I want to _what_?”

“Is that why you won’t look at me?” He’s asked, brazenly, as if they haven’t got lives to live, responsibilities to hold themselves to. “Is it because you want to kiss me?”

Sicheng stops himself from falling to the ground. He takes a moment, more than a moment, trying to recollect his thoughts, trying to regroup all of his nerves that’d flown out the air vents. Winded, he asks, “Do you _want_ me to kiss you?”

Yongqin lets his hands fall, from where they’re gripping Sicheng by the elbows, down to intertwine their fingers together. He isn’t smiling at all, Sicheng’s sure of it (he’s _looking_ ), but something in the air has changed. Like they’ve switched the knob into the right gear.

A gentle tug, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“You _want_ me to –”

“Yes.” He feels a thumb grazing across his knuckles. Yongqin’s voice tantalizing as always, wraps itself around Sicheng, leaving him in a bind. A bind he didn’t want to get out of anyway. “If you’re done misunderstanding me, I’d like you to kiss me.”

“I didn’t – I’m not –”

“Sicheng.”

He shuts up. A thousand more scenarios flit through his mind. All the nasty endings he’s dreamed of, ones that woke him up, ones that tortured him until the sun hit the sky. There are so many things that need to be said, discussed, agreed upon. It can’t be this easy – things are never this easy –

They kiss anyway.

Sicheng doesn’t know if he leaned in first, but their lips meet in a messy kind of collision. He must’ve leaned in too quick, aim completely off course. It doesn’t matter because Yongqin rights him, kissing him in a way that makes Sicheng forget that he’s twenty-two with monumental weights on his shoulders. The grip from earlier returns, but it’s no longer cold, just _warmth_ spreading across his neck and cheeks and shoulder and where Yongqin’s hands seem to be.

When the kiss is broken, Yongqin jumps straight into his arms, for once today, hiding away from Sicheng’s gaze.

“Do you get it now?” His voice is muffled by Sicheng’s neck. “Why I picked you.”

“Yeah,” Sicheng hugs back, fingers touching bare skin from where Yongqin’s cropped sweater had risen up. “Yeah, I do.”

“I know it’s a lot to think about, and I know you’ve been thinking about it a lot too.”

Sicheng buries his nose into Yongqin’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. That I knew.” Yongqin mumbles, “I wanted – I thought I should give you the chance to really think about it. If you wanted – whatever this is. Whatever it could be. If you wanted it as much as I did. But – when you stopped looking at me – I couldn’t – I didn’t know what to do. I thought you’d given up, then I realized that I didn’t want you to give up.”

In quiet disbelief, “I’m sorry too.”

“… Will you – kiss me again?”

Sicheng does. And when he does, he takes the deepest breath he’s ever taken.

 

 

 

 

He remembers then, just exactly what fresh air felt like, breathing, for the first time in a long time.

 

He breathes _right_.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn't going to write this, and nobody asked for so i don't know what i'm doing here ;--;; especially for two characters i've never written for before, i really hope this is alright ;; watch their [cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ovHSQwp1n0), if you haven't already!
> 
> title from, '[when you look me in the eyes'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHiIm50fsNI), jonas brothers
> 
> i also wrote this in like four hours so please ;—; go easy on me...
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/jenhyungs), [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/jenhyung)


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